Beef's reigning commercial cattle champs back for more in 2024

While they pride themselves on being grass-fed producers, the Quinns have found success in grain-fed competitions.

Peter and Bev Quinn and their son, Matthew, claimed their first grand champion at the Beef 2021 Commercial Cattle Championships.

In a line-up of 1566 head, it was their pen of 10 Charbray steers averaging 696.5kg that caught the attention of judges Geoff Teys, Teys Australia, and Robert Barnard, JBS.

The Quinns will enter grass-fed cattle into the competition, along with grain-fed entries, to be fed at Lillyvale Feedlot at Condamine.

"For our grain fed exhibits, we pick them out as weaner steers and we background them on silage and finish them on grain," Peter Quinn said.

Spread across roughly 35,200 hectares at Essex, Middlemount, and Taemas, Charters Towers, the Quinns run a herd of 6000 to 8000 head on country ranging from open forest to brigalow.

EU and PCAS accredited, they predominantly sell to Teys Australia for Grasslands.

Peter said their exhibits selected for this year's competition weren't too different to the champions they entered in 2021.

"We'll be entering approximately 100 head into this year's competition and the cattle we're entering are not much difference to the cattle we entered back in 2021," he said.

"A fair bunch of the cattle we're entering this year will be Charbray bullock pens with the bulk being Charbray Shorthorn cross.

"There will be probably two or three classes in the grain-fed. I don't think we'll have one for every class, but there'll be three classes I believe and we'll have exhibits in the grass-fed section as well."

While they mainly producing Charbray progeny, the Quinns also use Shorthorn sires.

"Around 10 years ago, we started to focus on eating quality, because we're EU and PCAS, so we're trying to get up to the highest end of the quality of the grass-fed product that we can produce," Peter said.

"That's why we bought in the Shorthorn cross eight years ago to lift our MSA eating index."

Peter said they used the competition to benchmark their cattle.

"It's a great event and irrespective of what the judges say, you can walk around and actually judge your cattle on your own ground," he said.

"We are cross breeders and we don't do anything special, but we did do something special back in 2021, when entered some of our cattle into the grain-fed section of the Beef 2021 commercial competition," he said.

"We wanted to see how our cattle would actually perform on grain. We have fed cattle in two or three drought years in the last 15 years, but it's always interesting to see what your cattle can do on grain in relation to grass.

"It's easy to finish them on grain obviously, but it's always good to see what they do and how much fat they can lay down."